Jewel in the tinsel crown

Now his brand new billion-dollar baby, the Getty Centre in Los Angeles, looks set to create unprecedented tidal waves. Any trip to catch up on what's happening in the art world has to begin with this staggering new acropolis, 14 years in the making and a vast white citadel to art perched high on a ridge overlooking LA's urban mass. Its gigantic size makes it more like a complete Italian hill town than a modernist Taj Mahal.

The statistics alone are awe-inspiring. In 1976 the famously mean J Paul Getty astounded everyone by leaving $700m to further an understanding of art. The $700m quickly ballooned into $4.5billion. Of this, in the past 10 years, the Getty Trust has spent a massive $770,000m buying paintings and sculpture for its museums - more than all UK museums put together.

Architect Richard Meier's new 16-building edifice cost more than $1bn, plus multiple millions more for its five research, conservation, education, and information institutes which include a major auditorium, 800,000-volume library, conservation labs, and an international grant aid programme of $67m to 1700 projects in 135 countries. All in all this occupies 1000-plus staff with 220 working in the museum alone.

Visitor figures of almost 800,000 in the first 12 weeks reflect the Getty's impact. LA now predicts that if tourists remain an extra day to see the Getty they'll add $3bn dollars a year to the local economy.

So would Getty himself be pleased at his posthumous art world domination? ''He'd be apoplectic. Spinning in his grave,'' exclaims Gillian Wilson, who left London's V & A in 1971 to work for Getty at his original small holiday hideaway ranch house in Malibu.

''When I arrived there were three of us, a hole in the ground, and a mixture of very good and very bad stuff. Mr Getty liked to buy big pieces of furniture - the more ornate the better. Anything under 4ft-wide he referred to as bric-a brac. When I saw the floor plan of the 1970s museum I realised I'd have 10 galleries and only 30 pieces to put in them.'' So Wilson began to build up the collection. It was hard going to get money out of Getty.

''However, we were aware that we had enormous responsibility to do something extraordinary. Now we are much more corporate. In the seventies I used to find superb pieces in Paris. You couldn't do it now.''

Wilson's collection of eighteenth-century French furniture is displayed in 14 gorgeous rooms, including three original French interiors full of exquisite Boulle furniture, with settings designed by Thierry Despont to evoke the lush Louis XIV era. This section is now regarded as the Getty's jewel in the crown.

Ironically, Getty never even saw his original small museum. ''He didn't set foot in America for the last 26 years. It was very odd that he left no specific instructions as to the museum other than a general statement about furthering artistic knowledge - particularly as he was not a profligate person and liked to buy things cheaply. But now so much cash has gone on bricks and mortar that, incredibly, I'm left with no budget for the decorative arts.'' Ironic indeed, for Getty was passionate about furniture while much less keen on paintings.

Getty curators - able to outbid anyone - have nevertheless gone on a titanic spending spree on paintings, aggressively bulk buying whole collections. These include Germany's Ludwig 144 manuscript collection in 1983; the next year six top private photography collections; then the odd Durer, Goya, Turner, Van Gogh, Irises, Cezanne's Apples at $30m, Rembrandt's Europa for $35m, Fra Bartolommeo for $22.5m; a Monet at $26.4m, and the Mantegna Adoration of the Magi, snatched from Tim Clifford's grasp for Scotland at the last minute for $10.4m.

''In the 1980s the Getty vacuumed up everything in sight making people very nervous,'' observes NACF director David Barrie. The recent purchase of a sublime Poussin landscape from Sudeley Castle for #16m is another example. Says Clifford: ''The Gettys said they were not going to plunder Britain's heritage but many of the best objects sold to them over the past 10 years come from Britain.''

Director John Walsh sees the main purpose of the new museum as to put the works in the most flattering setting. ''We want

to seduce visitors and provide

for their comfort.'' Depute director and chief curator Deborah Gribbon told me that, architecturally, they had been inspired by the setting of Copenhagen's Louisiana Museum which ''drapes over'' the Danish coastline. Thus Meier's design makes much use of multilevel ''draping'' across ravines and ridges.

The architect's famous white travertine limestone (16,000 tons quarried near Rome to combine ''human scale and civic grandeur on which sunlight plays in an ever changing show of radiance'') is designed for azure skies and looks less impressive against storm cloud grey.

Routes between museum pavilions required a dash across outside bridges or open walkways in drenching rain and, once inside the two-tier structures, lack of signs result in lost souls asking for directions. Even curators find themselves retracing their steps to lifts or outdoor stairs. The flow system is atrocious.

Then there's the lack of loos: none in the two main gallery buildings, and only one for women in the third. With two million visitors anticipated this year the museum has a problem. However the Getty does boast no-nonsense leaflets and practical, down-to-earth brochures which avoid insider jargon and include ''If You Only Have One Hour''.

One tour highlights Corregio's head of Christ, an ornate 1788 cabinet made for Louis XVI, and Bernini's Nepture of 1650. Another features Van Gogh's Irises, a 1821 David portrait, early photographs, and Mantegna's Adoration.

Whatever legitimate gripes, no-one can question the Getty's majestic impact with its unique views over city, Pacific Ocean, desert, and Santa Monica mountains. LA's new acropolis provides upstart Tinsel Town with true-blue glamour and spectacle.